Edsleskog and St Nils's Spring

Dalsland · Schweden · Church

The priest Nils was attacked and killed carrying the sacrament to a sick man. Where he fell a spring broke out – and a church so vast that Skara diocese lived off it.

In the late 1100s Nils was priest at Edsleskog, near present-day Åmål. Legend has it that he was on his way to a sick parishioner with the sacrament when he was set upon by evildoers and beaten to death. On the spot where he suffered martyrdom a spring is said to have broken from the ground. Nils became a saint, and the cult grew fast: around 1221 Pope Honorius III urged Bishop Bengt of Skara to honour him properly and grant indulgences to those who visited the church. Over the place of his death rose a brick church, 49 by 28 metres – Sweden's first known dated brick building and the country's second-largest structure of its day. Pilgrims came in such numbers that Edsleskog long provided half the income of the entire Skara diocese. The spring has been rediscovered and restored.

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Wo befindet sich Edsleskog and St Nils's Spring?

Edsleskog and St Nils's Spring liegt in Dalsland, Schweden.